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Read Kevin Bentley's 2013 I/ITSEC Paper

Abstract

As the overall fidelity and performance of simulation systems increases, there is a need for improved representation of transportation features. Roads, bridges, tunnels, and other drivable features need to be accurate representations of the real world and interoperable across a confederate of training systems. Improvements in the fidelity of these features in the past have primarily been focused on increased texture resolution and integration of hand modeled features. However, as the capabilities and expectations of ground based training systems increases, there is a need for major upgrades to the representation of transportation features.

This paper details the research and implementation efforts to greatly improve the appearance, and functionality of transportation features on simulation systems. The goal of this effort is to model detailed geospecific roads, bridges, and tunnels that can be used in virtual and constructive simulation systems.

Road networks and associated features have typically been represented as two-dimensional GIS linear features with attribution. However, in reality, roads are much more complex. Roads can vary in width, number of lanes, and driving rules at any point along the road. Placement of traffic lights and signs requires knowledge of the traffic laws and lane types for each lane in a road. Complex intersections such as freeway interchanges often involve complex three-dimensional interactions between roads where some roads merge, some roads intersect, and some roads pass over or under other roads. Because of this enhanced data models were required to represent these complex features.

Our solution includes a standalone topology analysis tool that converts the GIS data features to an optimized OpenDRIVE format that is capable of representing road geometry and topology. A model generation toolkit can read this format and output textured geometry for a wide variety of simulation tools and terrain generation platforms. Finally, we describe the integration with a production database generation program’s workflow.

Join Cognitics at the 2013 I/ITSEC Conference

Cognitics president Kevin Bentley will be presenting a paper titled “Improving the Fidelity of Transportation Features in Simulation” (read the abstract by clicking on this link) in room S320E at 10:30am Wednesday, December 4, 2013.

Cognitics will be at booth 417 at 2013 I/ITSEC with several technology presentations and demonstrations, including:

Run time model generation using the SPAWN model generation toolkit for transportation features integrated into the Diamond Visionics® Genesis RTX image generator.

OpenFlight terrain generated in Presagis' Terra Vista using a SPAWN plugin to produce high fidelity roads. This database is built using source data from the US Army SE Core Common Virtual Environment (CVE) program. Visualization powered by Dignitas Technologies Veritas viewer.

GameSim’s Conform tool rendering OpenDRIVE data created with SPAWN tools, and enabled by the Cognitics OpenDRIVE Software Development Kit.

About Cognitics

Cognitics was founded in 2008
to expand from consulting services into research and development, with the goal of creating software solutions for complex problems. Our primary focus since the award of a US Navy SBIR Phase I research and development contract in 2009 has been improving the representation of transportation features for use in simulation and training.

Since the initial success with the Phase I effort we have created several software solutions for the simulation industry.

Cognitics, Inc. was founded in 2008 by Kevin Bentley. Our mission is to produce effective software solutions to complex problems. Our specialty is research and development, but our real value is our ability to transfer technology from the research phase into real solutions.